Managing (In)Visibility by a Double Minority: Dissimulation and Identity Maintenance Among Alevi Bulgarian Turks

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MANAGING (IN)VISIBILITY BY A DOUBLE MINORITY: DISSIMULATION AND IDENTITY MAINTENANCE AMONG ALEVI BULGARIAN TURKS by Hande Sözer BSc, International Relations, Middle East Technical University, 1999 MA, Boğaziçi University, 2004 TITLE Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2012 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES COMMITTEE MEMBERS This dissertation was presented by Hande Sözer It was defended on September 5, 2012 and approved by Andrew J. Strathern, Professor, Anthropology Nicole Constable, Professor, Anthropology Jennifer Brick Murtazashvili, Assistant Professor, GSPIA Dissertation Advisor: Robert M. Hayden, Professor, Anthropology ii Copyright © by Hande Sözer 2012 iii Babama… iv MANAGING (IN)VISIBILITY BY A DOUBLE MINORITY: DISSIMULATION AND IDENTITY MAINTENANCE AMONG ALEVI BULGARIAN TURKS ABSTRACT Hande Sözer, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2012 ABSTRACT This dissertation focusses on invisibilities of ethno-religious minorities which face cycles of persecutions and severe discrimination in their larger societies. The literature portrays marginalized groups’ visibility either as a requirement for their empowerment or a source of their surveillance. However, I argue that for such groups what matters is not their visibility or invisibility per se but rather their control over it, i.e. to what extent the community members are able to reveal or conceal information about themselves. For them, invisibility may be a tactical tool as well as a structural burden. My dissertation examines complicated (in)visibilities of a double minority, Alevi Bulgarian Turks in Bulgaria and Turkey. Specifically, I focus on a paradoxical configuration of Alevis’ invisibilities: while the minority is marginalized and rendered invisible due to historical and structural conditions, they have not strived for increased visibility, but rather tried to decrease it. This configuration of self- imposed invisibility is captured by the term takiye (protective dissimulation), a Turkish variant of the Arabic taqiyya. In Islamic theology, the term refers to hiding one’s religious identity or its components. My analysis of takiye enables me to develop the English concept of dissimulation to indicate the possibility for collective agency for marginalized minorities even when their v marginalizations persist, as I show by examining Alevi Bulgarian Turks’ historical and present day dissimulations. The major theoretical contribution of the dissertation is development of this concept of dissimulation. For a dissimulating minority, the group’s identity remains robust even when its members publically claim membership in other groups, and group boundaries remain salient even when the members of the minority pretend to cross them. Therefore, dissimulation actually reinforces the distinction between the minority and other groups in the eyes of the minority’s own members. I discuss cases in which Alevi Bulgarian Turks utilized dissimulation by means of simulating the varying, historically changing majorities in post-Ottoman Bulgaria, while still following Alevi ways in the privacy of their own group members. The data for my thesis was gathered during nine months of ethnographic fieldwork Bulgaria and nine months of fieldwork in Turkey. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS 1.0 A PARADOXICAL INVISIBILITY: FORTIFYING INVISIBILITY FOR EMPOWERMENT IN THE FACE OF DISEMPOWERING STRUCTURAL INVISIBILITIES .......................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 RESEARCH PROBLEM ................................................................................................. 1 1.2 WHY ALEVIS, ALEVI BULGARIAN TURKS AND THEIR INVISIBILITIES? ... 3 1.3 INVISIBILITIES AND THE NOTION OF DISSIMULATION ............................... 12 1.4 FIELD SITES .................................................................................................................. 20 1.5 OUTLINE OF THE CHAPTERS ................................................................................. 24 2.0 METHODOLOGY: OPEN METHODS FOR RESEARCHING HIDDEN POPULATIONS .......................................................................................................................... 28 2.1 AN EMPIRICAL QUESTION: “HOW DO YOU KNOW YOUR INFORMANTS HAVE NOT DISSIMULATED TO YOU?” ....................................................................... 29 2.1.1 Access hinting Alevis’ visibilities and invisibilities ........................................31 2.1.2 A complicated situation of rapport: “Interview as a form of İbadet (worshipping)” .............................................................................................................33 2.1.3 Not really a Native Ethnographer: “I am a Zahiri, not a Yezid” .................34 2.1.4 Red Flags: The Secret, Slanders and Other Taboo Issues ............................36 2.1.5 Gender and Research .......................................................................................38 2.2 AN ETHICAL QUESTION: “IF DISSIMULATION IS A SURVIVAL TACTIC FOR ALEVIS, HOW MIGHT PUBLISHING ABOUT THESE TACTICS INFLUENCE THE COMMUNITY?” ................................................................................ 39 vii 2.3 RESEARCH DESIGN .................................................................................................... 43 2.3.1 Research Sites ....................................................................................................44 2.3.2 Interviews and Informant Profiles ..................................................................48 2.3.3 Participant Observation, Venues and Events .................................................50 2.4 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 53 3.0 DISSIMULATION: RETAINING MINORITY IDENTITY WHILE PRETENDING TO BE PART OF THE MAJORITY ........................................................................................ 54 3.1 DISSIMULATION IN-BETWEEN DISSIMILATION AND ASSIMILATION ..... 69 3.2 MINORITIES, AND MINORITIES WITHIN MINORITIES .................................. 83 3.3 NATIONAL MINORITIES AND A NOTION OF COLLECTIVE AGENCY ........ 87 3.4 BORDERS AND FRONTIERS ..................................................................................... 89 3.5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................... 94 4.0 HISTORY, HISTORICITY, HISTORIOGRAPHY ........................................................ 96 4.1 HISTORY ........................................................................................................................ 97 4.1.1 Principality in Bulgaria, Monarchy in the Ottoman Empire (1878-1908) ..97 4.1.2 Kingdom and Republic in Bulgaria, the Monarchy in the Ottoman Empire (1908-1923) .................................................................................................................101 4.1.3 Totalitarianism in Bulgaria and the Single-Party Republic in Turkey (1923-1944) .................................................................................................................106 4.1.4 Socialist People’s Republic in Bulgaria, Multi-Party Republic in Turkey (1944-1989) .................................................................................................................110 4.1.5 Multi-party Republics in both Bulgaria and Turkey (1989-) .....................117 4.2 HISTORIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................... 123 viii 4.2.1 Conflicting Historiographies on the Ottoman Rule in Bulgaria .................124 4.2.2 Conflicting Historiographies on Bulgarian Turks .......................................126 4.2.3 Conflicting Historiographies on Alevis with their Harmonious Exclusion128 4.3 HISTORICITY ............................................................................................................. 137 4.3.1 Alevi and Sunni Bulgarian Turks Narratives on the Closure of the Gap Between the Nation and the State ...........................................................................138 4.3.2 Sunni Bulgarian Turks’ Narratives related to Alevi Bulgarian Turks: ....139 4.3.3 Narratives indicating “Assimilation” and Dissimulation:...........................141 A narrative of individual assimilation: Halil Uzunoğlu ............................... 142 A narrative of dissimulation: Salih Ersoy ..................................................... 144 5.0 IDEAL-TYPES AMONG ALEVI BULGARIAN TURKS IN TURKEY AND BULGARIA ............................................................................................................................... 146 5.1 THE ALEVI PATH AS THE RELIGIOUS IDEAL TYPE ABOUT ALEVISM ... 151 5.1.1 The Alevi Path as a religious ideal-type ........................................................151 5.1.1.1 Belief ..................................................................................................... 152 5.1.1.2 Practices ............................................................................................... 159 5.1.1.3 Religious Organization ........................................................................ 166 5.2 AN OUTLINE OF ALEVI IDEAL TYPE VERSUS SUNNI AND SHIA ISLAM . 168 5.3 ALEVISM AMONG BULGARIAN TURKS VERSUS ALEVISM IN TURKEY . 171 5.4
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